1927
In 1927, America was captivated by Lindbergh, Ruth, Jolson, and Booze (N6). For popular music and jazz enthusiasts, this was a pivotal moment for Kahn, Goldkette, Beiderbecke, Venuti, and Lang. 1927 is divided into five sections, starting with a Prelude (1926), followed by the four quarters of the year, each delving day by day into how Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang contributed to the year through performance, recording, broadcasting, and film and how they helped shape the soundtrack of the Jazz Age.
PRELUDE
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD: The restlessness approached hysteria. The parties were bigger. The pace was faster, the shows were broader, the buildings were higher, the morals were looser, and the liquor was cheaper. (The Great Gatsby)
Broadway & Seventh Avenue, looking north from West 46th Street.
PROHIBITION
The United States became a dry country on January 17, 1920, when the National Prohibition Act (also known as the Volstead Act), made the production and sale of alcoholic beverages illegal. Despite this, New York City, the world's entertainment capital, was one of the "wettest" dry towns on the planet during the sixth year of prohibition. It was filled with numerous hotels, nightclubs, cafes, cabarets, and speakeasies that defiantly served hooch.
NEW YORK CITY
STANLEY WALKER: New York has everything. Its hanging gardens are said to be superior to those of Babylon. Its honest, staid burghers are cut in the patterns of their counterparts in any humdrum community. Its rackets probably are as brutal as those of Marseilles and more devious and varied than those of Chicago. Its vice has made it spoken of as if it were competing with the iniquities of Port Said and Harbin. It is deliriously beautiful and ugly as a mildewed toad. Somehow, the city cannot be slandered, and anything that may be said of it in praise or abuse is more likely than not to be true. It has very little civic pride in the sense that other towns, with their boastings and sensitiveness to criticism, are proud. A community conscience doesn’t exist.
The big town is Rome, Paris, Jerusalem, Berlin, with traces of Dubuque at its dullest and Dodge City at its most uproarious. It is the city of yes and no. It attracts great lawyers, not always the best. It draws outstanding surgeons and physicians, but not always the most competent. It is supposed to draw the cream of the theologians, educators, reformers, and assorted thinkers, but it doesn’t always. It is duck soup for medicine men and three-card monte adepts. The city has political leaders who can’t sign their own names; it has others who relax by reading the Greek classics. It has had lifeguards who couldn’t swim and subway conductors who lectured before learned societies on early Irish literature. (55)
Note: Stanley Walker was the night city editor for the New York Herald Tribune in 1926, and he served as city editor from 1928 to 1935. (55) Walker vividly recounts New York City, especially Broadway, in a colorful and captivating manner.
It is in New York City, specifically on Broadway, where our story unfolds, at the epicenter of the entertainment industry.
Broadway, NYC, looking south from 53rd Street, January 11-14, 1926 (Getty images).
BROADWAY
Gotham’s main thoroughfare, running north and south, and its side streets are vibrant during the Jazz Age. Speakeasies and nightclubs are controlled by gangsters who supply them with alcohol and jazz.
STANLEY WALKER: Certainly, the nightclub, at its worst and most flamboyant, had a direct connection with crime. It had its very origin in disrespect for the prohibition law. Instantly it appealed to the criminal as a source of business. (50)
JEROME CHARYN: There would be no “Jazz Age” and very little jazz without the white gangsters who took black and white jazz musicians under their wings. (43)
BILLY ROSE: All dressed up, (the bootlegger) needed a place to glow. And the only place he was welcome was Broadway. By becoming an entrepreneur, you were no longer a highwayman; you were a host.
JEROME CHARYN: Bootleggers were the real modernists. They redesigned their clubs to accommodate the flappers and young heiresses who were among their biggest clients. (43)
BUD FREEMAN: The better hotels and restaurants employed violinists and pianists who played very old-fashioned music. We were happy to have a (mobster) place to play the kind of music we loved. (43)
THE NIGHTCLUBS
LOUISE BERLINER: Prohibition had, in many ways, made crime “legit” and gangsters the new elite. Liquor profits bought respectability, and people came to value those who supplied them with booze and grew to depend on them. So did the police and agents who received their cut, and the health inspectors who received their cut, not to mention Tammany Hall and miscellaneous connected businesses.
Thus, the night-club industry was built on the deliberate flouting of the law by the night-club owners, entertainers, clientele, and even the lawmakers themselves. The operation seemed fairly safe. The liquor, hidden in a potato sack, was left in a dead-end alley behind the building, about five hundred dollars’ worth at a time. Only the waiters and bartenders had access to the alley. Since most of the customers brought their own, liquor was a small item at the club, anyway, at least compared to the cover charge. If the club (Texas Guinan’s 300 Club) took in three or four thousand dollars a night, only 10 percent of that would be for whiskey. When someone wanted a bottle, the going price was twenty dollars a quart of rye or scotch and twenty-five dollars for champagne. (54)
NEW YORK CITY NIGHT SPOTS
December 1, 1926 (41)
Note: The Broadway "lingo" mentioned below captures the essence of the reporters from that era. Couvert=cover charge.
Roger Wolfe Kahn's LE PERROQUET DE PARIS (146 West 57th Street) is the last gasp in smart night clubs. Ultra-artistic and ultra In following. The millionaire maestro's own crack dance band. Be sure to make it. $5 couvert. For the dress-ups (not that dinner jacket is open sesame; if they need you badly enough, you can come in overalls providing you look like a b. r. Note: Kahn's nightclub did not serve alcohol!
AVALON CLUB-Liveliest around 3 a. m. and thereafter. Good floor show. Cozy and intimate.
BLACK BOTTOM CLUB-Harlem transplanted to Broadway. Must be known to get in. No couvert; ever; tiling reasonable.
DOVER CLUB-"Those three boys," Jimmie Durante, Eddie Jackson, and Lou Clayton. Enough for the "wise" mob. Couvert $2. Always lively.
SEVEN-ELEVEN (former CHUMMY CLUB)-Newest midtown colored cafe. Hotsy-Totsy and reasonable. Colored female boxers as special novelty.
Texas Guinan's 300 CLUB (151 West 54th Street)-couvert. Every night New Year's Eve.
Vincent Lopez at CASA LOPEZ (West 54th Street); Frank Bibuse and Keller Sisters and Lynch also worthwhile.
Helen Morgan's 54th ST. CLUB (231 West 54th Street) has Miss Morgan from Playground pre-Hiding. Good show. $2 and $3.
FRIVOLITY CLUB with undraped revue. Elaborate floor entertainment, and advanced nude Ideas. $3 convert.
PARODY CLUB-Inclined to be hotsy-totsy. That condition goes similarly for the EVERGLADES and TOMMY GUINAN’S PLAYGROUND (Broadway & 52nd Street). All standards among nightlife places.
TIMELINE 1926
JANUARY-APRIL ‘26
New York City
Joe Venuti has resided in New York City since September 1925 at 149 West 55th Street. He has been performing nightly with the Roger Wolfe Kahn Orchestra at the Biltmore Hotel, with weekly broadcasts on WJZ and recording with the Kahn band for Victor. (18) (46)
BILLBOARD: The millionaire maestro has just added to his (Hotel Biltmore) band Joe Venuti, for many years violinist with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. It is said that Venuti is being paid a record price by Kahn on a long-term contract (Sept 19, 1925).
Note: When signing Venuti, Kahn was a few months away from his eighteenth birthday! (b. Oct 19, 1907) (18).
Roger Wolfe Kahn and His Hotel Biltmore Orchestra, ca. late 1925, Apeda Studios, NYC. Joe Venuti, standing, second on the right. (53)
Eddie Lang has been with the Roger Wolfe Kahn Organization since January 1926. (N7)
PHONO WEEKLY: Roger Wolfe Kahn, leader of the Hotel Biltmore Orchestra and accomplished musician himself, has swelled the ranks of his band by adding three new men, “Miff” Mole and Alfred Evans, formerly of Ross Gorman’s combination, and Eddie Lange (sic), a banjoist who made quite a name for himself with the Mound City Blue Blowers. (January 5, 1926)
ARTHUR SCHUTT: Roger paid one price for the pair. We averaged five to ten recordings a week and made a lot of money; $400 or $500 a week as usual, and in one seven-day period, I made $1,250. No one worked for scale, that was an insult. We got double scale for casuals and $175 for one radio show. We lived it up. (40)
Note: The average annual salary in 1927 will be $1,300. (44)
In addition to his full-time contract with Roger Wolfe Kahn, Venuti is also recording and playing with the Jean Goldkette Orchestra when it is at the Roseland Ballroom in NYC (46).
We Three: Red Nichols-trumpet, Eddie Lang-guitar, Vic Berton-tympani, NYC, ca. late 1925.
Lang has started making periodic trips from Philadelphia to NYC to record with Roger Wolfe Kahn, Ross Gorman, and Red Nichols (46).
MAY-SEPTEMBER ‘26
Atlantic City, New Jersey
Every summer from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day weekend, dating back to possibly as early as 1919, Joe & Eddie have been playing in hotel bands. When they're not on stage, they spend their days fishing and swimming in the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. This year (1926), they are in Atlantic City early with the intention of leading their own band at a boardwalk club.
Atlantic City Boardwalk, 1926. E.O.Hoppe
Atlantic City is expected to have a great summer. Temperatures for June, July, and August will be in the upper 80s, reaching 100 degrees on July 21st. (58) For the July 30th weekend, “Heavy showers and overcast skies failed to halt the influx to the shore for the week-end. It was the biggest crowd of the season, about 450,000 visitors arriving by trains, automobiles and buses. (57)
KITTY (RASCH-LANG) GOOD: The day before we opened, the Club was trying out dance bands. I almost fell out of my chair when Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang came on stage with their band. (48)
Note: The Venuti-Lang band probably made their audition, referred to above, at the May 16 “Professional Night.” (57)
EDDIE LANG: Joe Venuti and I had our own band at the Silver Slipper Café, Atlantic City (summer 1926). (29) Note: Joe Venuti and His Victor Recording Orchestra open at the Silver Slipper Supper Club on Sunday, May 30.
PERSONNEL: Joe Venuti-violin, leader, Eddie Lang-guitar, banjo, co-leader, Vic D’Ippolito-trumpet (as Victor De Pola), Joe Sigmund-alto sax, clarinet, Charlie Sansone-piano (as Chas. Sansome), Mike Trafficante-bass, Fred Valinote-drums. (47)
Note: Joe Venuti and His Victor Recording Orchestra never actually recorded. The reference to "Victor" was likely a sales tactic, possibly provided to the club management by Venuti. This reference was based on his recordings with Roger Wolfe Kahn & Jean Goldkette, who were both on the Victor record label.
Note: The ad incorrectly states, “Opening Sunday Evening, May 31,” Sunday was May 30.
Eddie Lang is reunited with Kathleen (Kitty) Rasch at the Silver Slipper. They had first met in Philadelphia in 1920-21 while she was on tour with the Ziegfeld Follies.
KITTY (LANG) GOOD: One night after we had done the shows (at the Silver Slipper), Eddie and I had breakfast at Child’s Restaurant, and then we walked along the beach. Eddie looked at me and finally said, “Kitty, let’s get married.” After talking things over, we decided to go to Norwalk, Connecticut, after one of our shows and, get married there, and then come back in time for the show the next day. (48)
Note: The Salvatore Massaro/Kathleen Rasch marriage certificate, recently discovered, is dated February 20, 1932!
Eddie & Kitty Lang, Atlantic City, NJ, ca. 1926-1927.
The Venuti-Lang band closes at the Silver Slipper Supper Club on Sunday, September 14, 1926. (56)
Mid-SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER ‘26
NEW YORK CITY
Joe Venuti returns to the Roger Wolfe Kahn Orchestra @ the Biltmore Hotel, NYC.
Eddie Lang and his wife Kitty take an apartment @ 370 West 51st, NYC. (48)
Venuti & Lang moonlight at Tommy Guinan’s Playground, Broadway & 52nd, NYC, through November.
EDDIE LANG: Joe Venuti and I had our own band at the Silver Slipper Café, Atlantic City, from which place we went to the Playground Café in New York. (29)
Note: In September, Joe and Eddie were at Tommy Guinan's Playground at Broadway and 52nd Street in NYC with Red Nichols. In October and November, Venuti took over leadership of the band at Tommy Guinan's Playground while still working with Roger Wolfe Kahn.
STANLEY WALKER: The great luck of Tommy Guinan, brother of Texas, although raided and arrested many times, never got into any serious trouble. (50)
Tommy Guinan’s Playground Marquee, Broadway & 52nd Street, NYC. (Getty Images)
September 16 (Thu): Joe Venuti turns twenty-three (b. 1903). He lives in an apartment at 244 West 56th Street, NYC.
On September 29 (Wed), Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang make their first recording under their own names: STRINGING THE BLUES and BLACK AND BLUE BOTTOM. (12)
Note: Three takes of Stringing the Blues were recorded. All were rejected and the masters destroyed, but not before a shellac test-pressing was made. The test still exists, as this photo shows. Penciled comments on the label include "Reject " and "weak," which likely refers to the signal level rather than the quality of the performance, which is more overtly akin to Tiger Rag than the familiar takes.
STRINGING THE BLUES-Take 1 test-pressing label, September 29, 1926.
OCTOBER ‘26
NEW YORK CITY
The Goldkette Orchestra is back in New York City for a two-week engagement (Oct 6-17) at Roseland Ballroom and will be recording for Victor with Venuti & Lang.
RUSS MORGAN: The only reason that Joe and Eddie took the job (at Roseland) was because McGirr’s Billiard Room was upstairs. They could keep a game going all night up there by making a few shots during each intermission. (38)
Take 2 of IDOLIZING removes the vocal and features Eddie Lang’s superb accompaniment.
THE POOL HALL
The pool hall played a significant role in Venuti & Lang's formative and adult lives. In many ways, that environment and the (often) tough characters that inhabited them shaped their lives and attitudes. Despite Venuti's rough reputation and Lang's quiet demeanor, both were formidable, and the truth is, neither of them was to be messed with. Salvatore and Giuseppe frequented the parlors as kids in Philadelphia and continued visiting them as adults in every city they found themselves in. They spent much of their downtime between rehearsals, recording sessions, and gigs in the pool hall. Eddie would switch between playing games at the billiard table and making quick dashes to the telephone booth to place bets with a bookie, while Joe was an aggressive pool player but a terrible loser. As Sal Massaro in South Philly and later Eddie Lang in New York City, the guitarist was considered an excellent player, and, it has been said, even challenged billiard champs like Willie Mosconi (b. June 27, 1913) and Ralph Greenleaf (b. Nov. 3, 1899), who gave Eddie an inscribed watch. (12)
WILLIE MOSCONI: I never heard of any of the top players taking (billiard) lessons the way you do in golf or tennis, most of them started out young and picked it up by playing and observing. Pocket billiards, or pool as it is colloquially called, was a big-time sport in the twenties and the daily press gave prominent coverage to championship tournaments. Pool was a game whose popularity grew out of a grassroots appeal. It was played, at varying levels of efficiency, by millions of citizens in pool halls that studded the neighborhoods of big cities and the streets of small backwater towns. Every major city had a showcase billiard parlor that exuded class & refinement: Allinger’s in Philadelphia, McGirr’s in New York (City), and Bensinger’s in Chicago. The more intimate rooms ranged from modest respectability to gritty little dungeons in which money changed hands quickly, and reputations were made or lost on the stroke of a cue.
Pool had always been a pastime that thrived at both ends of the social spectrum. It was, at the same time, a pursuit of elegant grandeur played by men of breeding and character and a seamy ritual indulged in by small-time hoods and quick-buck con men hungry for an easy score. An association with gambling developed and would never quite be shed. Increasingly, the pocket variety of billiards was referred to more commonly as "pool,' a term derived from the betting pool spectators who would wager on the outcome of a game. By the early twenties, there were some forty thousand pool rooms in the United States. (37)
Note: Mosconi was a world-class billiards player and, like Venuti & Lang from South Philadelphia, of Italian descent.
Note: The city of Chicago boasted over 600 billiard and pocket billiard rooms in 1928-29. (N8)
MIKE PETERS: In New York City, Joe and Eddie have a favorite pool hall on Broadway (McGirr’s, above Roseland) that was frequented by the “dese, dems, and dose guys,” who appear to have never bothered either of them. (12)
JOE VENUTI: We knew them from the joints, and they knew I wasn’t afraid of ‘em. (12)
CARMEN MASTREN: These were a couple of guys (Venuti & Lang) from Philadelphia; they came up from South Philly, ya know, that was a rough neighborhood they came from. (49)
LEW GREEN SR.: Joe (Venuti) was a very tough cat! (49)
WILLIE MOSCONI: I grew up in a tough area of South Philadelphia, and I often had to fight my way to and from school. I still have a scar on my forehead and one on my chin from boyhood fights. No one used guns or knives, but bricks and clubs were not uncommon. The times were hard, and if you had a few cents in your pocket or were carrying your lunch, you might have to fight to keep it. (37)
Note: Mosconi, born in 1913, is ten years Venuti’s junior, and eleven Lang’s.
WILLIE MASCONI: Every major city had a showcase billiard parlor that exuded class & refinement, Allinger’s in Philadelphia, McGirr’s in New York (City), Bensinger’s in Chicago. I got a call from Bob McGirr, who ran McGirr’s Academy in the Roseland building on Broadway. Roseland was a popular dance hall at the time, and McGirr’s, which was located above it, was an equally well-known billiard hall. (37)
Note: Mosconi, also from south Philadelphia, was a seven-year-old prodigy (b. 1913) who challenged Greenleaf in 1920; Greenleaf won. (37)
Note: PAUL NEWMAN: The picture (The Hustler, 1961) was filmed entirely in New York, and most of the pool sequences were shot in McGirr’s & Ames (billiard hall). (37)
ROGER WOLFE KAHN
Joe and Eddie are in Vaudeville with Roger Wolfe Kahn’s Orchestra at the Palace Theatre during the week of October 18th. In the same week, on October 22nd, they went back to the recording studio for their second record date under their own names. However, the recordings of "STRINGING THE BLUES" (takes 4, 5, 6) are never released. Three days later, on October 25th, Eddie Lang turns twenty-four (born in 1902).
NOVEMBER & DECEMBER ‘26
NEW YORK CITY
WOULDN’T YOU is a rare instance where Venuti & Lang are both playing an obligato under the vocal; Venuti plays the melody, while Lang offers accompaniment & single-string fills. The edit below includes the vocal, followed by a chorus where the vocal has been removed. AND forty seconds later they're back in for a sixteen-bar feature! This is the start of Kahn featuring his jazz soloists on recordings.
The duo is featured nightly at Roger Wolfe Kahn’s new nightclub, Le Perroquet de Paris, which opened on November 5.
Le Perroquet de Paris, 146 West 57th Street, NYC, bandstand & dance floor (53).
Recording sessions throughout November & December include Ross Gorman, Red Nichols, Jimmy Lytell (Lang), Jack Pettis, Cliff Edwards & Roger Wolfe Kahn (Venuti & Lang), and another record date (Nov 8) under their own names: STRINGING THE BLUES (4 takes; takes 8 & 11 are issued). (12)
JOE VENUTI
1978
On his final New York City visit in 1978 (he had a gig @ Michael’s Pub), Joe Venuti returned to his old stomping ground, Broadway. As he rode through the once vibrant heart of the entertainment business, now dilapidated with battered facades, empty buildings, and adult theaters, memories flooded back. He reminisced (in short bursts, as was his way) about the days when Broadway was a place and a time alive with music, entertainment, the celebrated, and the infamous. “We had everything,” Venuti recalled the packed theaters, picture houses, hotels, dance halls, nightclubs, speakeasies, and pool halls. He mentioned the influential figures of the time, such as Rollini, Bix, Tram, Challis, Jimmy and Tommy, Bing, the Baron (Arthur Schutt), Pops (Paul Whiteman), and Eddie, all making their way through Gotham, setting the tempo for the soundtrack of the age. “Jazz changed.” Life had changed! “Don’t you understand? They were the true pioneers of the music business.” Venuti didn’t need to be reminded that they were gone but never imagined they’d be forgotten. A long silence! Staring straight ahead, hands placed over his stomach into the top waist of his pants. More silence. Finally. “Shit (as “sheet”) … We owned this fuckin’ town.”
CITATIONS
1. BIX The Leon Bix Beiderbecke Story, Philip R. and Linda K. Evans, Prelike Press, 1998.
2. Feeling My Way, A Discography of the recordings of EDDIE LANG 1923-1933, Raymond F. Mitchell, R F Mitchell, 2002.
3. Sylvester Ahola diary.
4. Variety Oct 15, 1927.
5. Billboard, Oct 22, 1927 (New Yorker Closes Its Doors (last Sunday-Oct 15?, 16?).
6. Adrian Rollini, The Life and Music of a Jazz Rambler, Ate van Delden, University Press of Mississippi, 2020.
7. Variety, August 31, 1927.
8. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 22, 1927.
9. TRAM The Frank Trumbauer Story, Philip R. Evans & Larry F. Kiner, Studies in Jazz, No. 18, The Scarecrow Press, 1994.
10. cinematreasures.org/theaters/2975
11. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Count_Fight
12. The Classic Columbia and OKeh Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang Sessions, Mosaic Records MD8-213, 2002.
13. re. October 20 ca. RECORDING SESSION: Willard Robison and His Orchestra, Perfect records, NYC. Frank Trumbauer ledgers list Eddie Lang. The tenor guitar/banjo does not reflect his playing style or choice of instruments. It is possible Lang was scheduled for the session but sent in a sub. SOURCE: The Complete OKeh and Brunswick Bix Beiderbecke, Frank Trumbauer and Jack Teagarden Sessions (1924-36), Mosaic Records MD7-211, 2001.
14. September 13, 1927, General/OKeh Phonograph Corporation card file.
15. Allegro/Local 802 AFM & February 14, 1927, Vitaphone consent form.
16. The American Dance Band Discography 1917-1942, Brian Rust, Arlington House, 1975.
17. BIX, Man & Legend, Richard M. Sudhalter, Philip R. Evans, Arlington House, 1974.
18. THE KAHNS of Fifth Avenue, Iain Cameron Williams, i will publishing, 2022.
19. The Kingdom of Swing, Benny Goodman, Irving Kolodin, Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1939.
20. Pop Memories 1890-1954, The History of American Popular Music, Joel Whitburn, Record Research, 1986.
21. Jazz Anecdotes Second Time Around, Bill Crow, Oxford University Press, 2005. No citation for the Venuti/Pennsylvania Hotel story.
22. The New Yorker, July 9, 1927, & The New Yorker, August 27, 1927
23. Variety, August 31, 1927.
24. Variety, Sep 21 & 28, 1927, Roger Kahn’s Farewell.
25. TIME magazine, December 1, 1926, NIGHT CLUBS
26. Thirty Years With The Big Bands, Arthur Rollini, Bayou Press, 1987.
27. The Complete OKeh and Brunswick Bix Beiderbecke, Frank Trumbauer and Jack Teagarden Sessions (1924-36), Mosaic Records MD7-211, 2001.
28. David Sager, Recorded Sound Research Center, Library of Congress, 2005 Essay.
29. “HELLO-RHYTHM FIENDS!” - His own Story, written for Rhythm by EDDIE LANG, World’s Guitar Ace. RHYTHM, MODERN-MUSIC-MONTHLY, VOL V. NO.60, SEPTEMBER 1932
30. Roger Wolfe Kahn archives @ Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers.
31. BIX The Definitive Biography of a Jazz Legend, Jean Pierre Lion, Continuum, 2005.
32. Sylvester Ahola, The Gloucester Gabriel, Dick Hill, Studies in Jazz No. 14, The Scarecrow Press and the Institute of Jazz Studies Rutgers, 1993.
33. Voices of the Jazz Age, Chip Deffaa, University of Illinois Press, 1990.
34. My Life In Jazz, Max Kaminsky, The Jazz Book Club, 1965.
35. Kahn Quits Jazz Orchestra For Composing and Flying, SOURCE TBD, November 9, 1927.
36. CONN Instruments Advertisement, The Music Trades, April 16, 1927.
37. Willie’ Game, Willie Masconi, Stanley Cohen, Macmillan, 1993.
38. The Blue Violin, James Baxter, inspired by Robert White.
39. George Van Eps-Guitar Player, August 1983.
40. Jazz Masters Of The Twenties, Richard Hadlock, Collier Books, 1965.
41. 1926, December 1: Time Magazine, NIGHT CLUBS
42. Recording The ‘Twenties, The Evolution of the American Recording Industry, 1920-29, Allan Sutton, Mainspring Press, 2008.
43. Gangsters & Gold Diggers, Old New York, The Jazz Age, and the Birth of Broadway, Jerome Charyn, Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003.
44. American Chronicle, 1920-1989, Seven Decades in American Life, Lois Gordon, Allan Gordon, Crown Publishers, 1990.
45. One Summer America 1927, Bill Bryson, Anchor, 2013.
46. Jazz Records 1897-1942, Brian Rust, Arlington House, 1978.
47. Stringing The Blues, Richard DuPage, Columbia Records, 1962.
48. Still A Ziegfeld Girl, Memoirs of a Showgirl, An Autobiography, Kitty (Lang) Good, Writers Guild Of America 136497. (N3)
49. Sunday, November 25, 1979 @ the home of Lew Green Jr., Darien CT w/Lew Green Sr. & Carmen Mastren.
50. The Night Club Era, Stanley Walker, Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1933.
51. Stringing The Blues, Retrospective View of Joe Venuti, Max Harrison, The Strad, October 1986.
52. Observations of a Pool Room Junkie, Harmon Rangell, poolhistory.com, 2020.
53. Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey.
54. Texas Guinan, Queen Of The Nightclubs, Louise Berliner, Curtis Brown, 1993. (EXCERPT)
55. City Editor, Stanley Walker, Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1934.
56. Atlantic City Daily Press, September 14, 1926.
57. New York Times, August 2, 1926.
58. www.extremeweatherwatch.com/cities/atlantic-city/year-1926
NOTES
N1. Audubon Theatre as 14th Street: Adrian Rollini, The Life and Music of a Jazz Rambler, Ate van Delden, University Press of Mississippi, 2020 & TRAM The Frank Trumbauer Story, Philip R. Evans & Larry F. Kiner, Studies in Jazz, No. 18, The Scarecrow Press, 1994.
N2. First Tunney/Dempsey fight-The Dempsey-Tunney Fight, 1926, Sesquicentennial Municipal Stadium, Philadelphia, PA, September 23, 1926, blog.phillyhistory.org/index.php/2009/01/the-dempsey-tunney-fight-of-1926
N3. Kitty Lang's book has a rather large gap from Oct 1926 to meeting Crosby/joining Whiteman in 1929.
N4: According to Eddie Lang's nephews (Tom & Ed Massaro), Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, and Tom Massaro (Eddie's brother & their father) were all fans of the American League baseball teams. The Philadelphia Athletics played at Shibe Park in Philadelphia and featured players like Ty Cobb and Lefty Grove. The New York Yankees played at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, New York and were known for their "Murderers Row" lineup with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. The 1927 baseball season began on Tuesday, April 12, with a game between Philadelphia and the Yankees at Yankee Stadium. Throughout the season, the two teams played nearly two dozen games, with the Yankees winning 15 of them. The New York Yankees finished first in the season, with Philadelphia coming in second. Given their passion for sports and gambling, it is likely that Venuti and Lang would have attended some of these day games.
N5: March 14-31 CLUB DATES: one of the ten Roger Wolfe Kahn Orchestra’s fills in @ Le Perroquet de Paris, 146 West 57th Street, NYC, 11 pm-2:30 am, presumably without Venuti & Lang, who are with Kahn @ the Hotel Pennsylvania. It is possible one of the ten Roger Wolfe Kahn Orchestra’s fills in @ Le Perroquet de Paris.
N6: Lindbergh, Ruth, Ford, Jolson, and Booze.
Charles Lindbergh: On May 20–21, 1927, he made the first nonstop solo transatlantic flight from New York City to Paris, a distance of 3,600 miles, flying alone for 33.5 hours in the Spirit of St. Louis. Lindbergh biographer A. Scott Berg wrote people were "behaving as though Lindbergh had walked on water, not flown over it."
Babe Ruth: “The Bambino” hit a record 60 home runs in 1927, and Lou Gehrig belted 47 in the same year. The NY Yankees won a record 110 games driven by the “Murderers Row” lineup of Coombs, Koenig, Ruth, Gehrig, Meusel, and Lazzeri. (44)
Al Jolson: The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson, was the first successful full-length talkie; it premiered on October 6, 1927, at Warners’ Theatre, next to Roseland, during the Goldkette Orchestra’s run at the Ballroom.
Booze: Gangsters controlled the speakeasies and nightclubs, supplying them with spirits and jazz. The Al Capone gang nets $100 million in the liquor trade, $30 million in protection money, $25 million in gambling, $10 million in vice, and $10 million in the “rackets.” (44)
N7: In January 1926, it is possible Lang signed on with Roger Wolfe Kahn for recording only as he was still a touring member of the Mound City Blue Blowers and was living in south Philadelphia.
ORCHESTRA WORLD: Blue Blowers on Road: “Eddie Lange gets all the music there is out of a guitar.” Touring NYC (Vaudeville), Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, Philadelphia, PA, Atlantic City, NJ, and Washington DC. (May 14, 1926)
N8: Over 600 billiard and pocket billiard rooms were listed in the 1928-29 Chicago City Directory.
forums.azbilliards.com/threads/interactive-map-billiard-halls-of-chicago-1928-29.208949